Leseprobe

95 Construction of the New Gerstle-Salzburg Villa celain figurines. Audiences attending concerts were seated in the hallway, with the doors to the adjoining drawing room left open. Although the three boys in the Salzburg family all took piano lessons, their younger sister Rosemarie never learned to play. Of the artworks displayed in the villa, Rosemarie would later remember one painting by Max Liebermann in particular. The work by this renowned German Im- pressionist remained in the family’s possession until the mid-1970s. Both the ground-floor and first-floor halls had an adjoining small room which communicated direct- ly with the hall. It had tiled walls, one of which holding a fountain. As well as being used as a con- servatory, this room also served to provide the cen- tral hall with natural light. Fitted with a three- winged window, there was also plenty of light for the rubber trees and other plants that grew there. There was a billiard table in the ground-floor hall, which Victor Klemperer mentioned in a diary entry from 9 November 1924. He describes having played billiards for half an hour with the host Dr Friedrich Salzburg and several other guests at one of the fami- ly’s ‘social gatherings’.10 Grete Salzburg later made changes to the hallway’s furnishings. Her daughter described some of the individual pieces in this room, listing an old clock with a long pendulum, a divan purpose-built around the fireplace that she described as a ‘French bed’, chairs, a couch table of carved wood with a copper fruit holder attached to it, a li- queur cabinet decorated with Delft tiles situated be- tween the doors to the drawing room and dining room, and (evidently on the other side of the room) an inbuilt bookshelf. Describing the furniture in the upstairs hall, Rosemarie recalled that the room con- tained a beautiful sofa and cushioned chairs. The fire insurance register compiled in 1912 lists ma- terials and interior fitting components used in the villa. The list includes oak floorboards, which cov- ered the floors of eight rooms. Three rooms in the villa had parquet floors, while the floors in another nineteen were covered in cork-lined linoleum, as was fairly typical of the period. The wall covering for one room was of straw matting with borders, and the walls in two others were decked in Linkrusta, a lino- leum-like material that was also commonly used in this period. Five rooms boasted fabric wall coverings fitted with picture mouldings. The fittings and panelling in the Gerstle family’s dining room were made of oak. Among the items listed individually were the ‘fitted marble-topped sideboard’ illustrated above, above which can be seen the ‘back panel with crystal mirrored glass’. Other features of the dining room included ‘1 glass cupboard and 2 radiator covers, incl. fabric cover- ing with picture mouldings.’ In the upper-left sec- tion of the photograph (seen reflected in the mir- ror) is the chandelier listed in the fire insurance register as ‘1 chand. / dining room.’ Valued at 900 Marks, it was the most expensive lighting fixture included on the fire insurer’s list. In addition to lighting fixtures, the register also de- tails the house’s heating, plumbing, and electrical systems, including their most important technical components and devices. The villa was fitted with Villa at Tiergartenstrasse 50. Above: View from Tiergar- tenstrasse. Below: Upper-floor dining room. Photographs in the book Lossow & Kühne , Max Hans Kühne, Dresden 1920.